Insights

When years of professional experience meet a menopause-related confidence wobble. THE GREAT PROFESSIONAL CONFIDENCE DISAPPEARING ACT 🎩 You’ve built a career. You’ve solved problems, managed difficult colleagues, delivered projects, navigated office politics and survived meetings that really should have been emails. You know your stuff. You’ve got the experience, the skills and possibly a drawer full of notebooks containing plans that could run a small country. So why, sudden

THE INVISIBLE PAIN BEHIND THE PROFESSIONAL SMILE Picture the scene. You have your work clothes on, your laptop open, three meetings lined up and a to-do list that appears to have been written by someone who thinks there are 36 hours in a day. You are ready to conquer the world. Except your knees hurt, your shoulders ache, your fingers feel stiff, and getting out of your chair requires the sort of negotiation usually reserved for international peace treaties. Welcome to the le

October 2026 is International Menopause Awareness Month, so it seems like the perfect time to pause, take stock and ask a rather important question: What on earth has happened in the world of menopause over the last year? 🌸 Quite a lot, actually. Menopause has moved further into the spotlight, and not just because we've become rather better at talking about hot flushes, brain fog and the joys of waking up at 3am wide awake for absolutely no useful reason. 🥱 Over the past ye

The season of change has arrived. There is something rather lovely about the Harvest Moon arriving just as summer packs away its deckchair and autumn starts rummaging around for its woolly jumpers. 🍂 Saturday, 26 September, saw the 2026 Harvest Moon. It arrives just a few days after the autumnal equinox, which marked the astronomical beginning of autumn here in the UK on 23 September. The Harvest Moon is traditionally the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox, and this y

It’s International Week of Happiness at Work, which means we are officially allowed to talk about something that tends to get pushed down the workplace agenda somewhere between mandatory compliance training and someone forgetting to empty the office dishwasher. Happiness……At work. And before you picture a corporate wellness guru making everyone sit in a circle while somebody plays whale music in the background, let’s get one thing straight. Workplace happiness does not mean b

Why inclusion matters when your career, confidence and priorities are changing NATIONAL INCLUSION WEEK: MORE THAN A WEEK OF GOOD INTENTIONS National Inclusion Week is here, and this year's theme, Build Trust. Navigate Change., could hardly be more relevant to the world of work. Because change is happening everywhere. Organisations are restructuring. Technology is transforming jobs. Teams are becoming more multigenerational. Employees are asking for greater flexibility, better

THE DAY YOUR CAREER CONFIDENCE DISAPPEARS One minute, you’re the woman who can walk into a difficult meeting, negotiate a tricky situation and make sense of chaos before everyone else has found the biscuits. Then suddenly, you’re staring at your laptop wondering why you have forgotten the name of someone you have worked with for seven years. Your confidence has gone walkabout. Your concentration is playing hide-and-seek. You are exhausted, irritable, overwhelmed and wondering

STARTING OVER? OR MOVING FORWARD? “Starting over” sounds dramatic, doesn't it? It conjures up images of burning your CV, handing back your years of experience and turning up for your first day in a completely new career armed with nothing but enthusiasm and a reusable coffee cup. But here’s the thing: you are not starting from zero. You are starting from experience. Whether you're considering a career change, moving industry, returning after a career break, stepping into self

Sometimes your career changes because you decide it is time for something different. You update your CV. You tell your friends. You buy a suspiciously optimistic notebook and start making plans. Perhaps you even have a Pinterest board entitled “My Fabulous New Life”. ✨ But what happens when the change chooses you? Redundancy. Bereavement. Ill health. Divorce. Caring responsibilities. A relationship ending. A relocation. Organisational restructuring. A promotion you never want

19 August is World Photography Day, so taking a career “snapshot” seems rather fitting for this week's article. 📸 Photography has a wonderful way of freezing a moment in time. One click captures where we were, what we looked like, who we were with and, occasionally, a truly unfortunate hairstyle. But a photograph is only ever a snapshot. It doesn't tell you what happened five minutes before the shutter clicked. It can't predict where you'll be five years later. And it certai

INTERNATIONAL CAT DAY AND THE ART OF BEING CURIOUS If there is one thing cats have absolutely nailed, it is curiosity. A cardboard box? Must investigate.A cupboard door? Obviously hiding something.A mysterious noise at 2am? Time to wake the entire household and conduct a full forensic investigation. 🐈 Curiosity should lead us somewhere, perhaps to new ideas. And on Saturday 8 August, International Cat Day gave us the perfect excuse to celebrate our feline friends and their a

Every year on 4 August, International Owl Awareness Day celebrates one of nature's wisest creatures. Owls have long symbolised wisdom, intuition and the ability to see clearly in the dark. Perhaps that's why they make the perfect mascot for career change. 🦉 The wisest of Owls. Many professional women spend years looking after everyone else's careers, families, teams and ambitions before pausing to ask one important question: "Is my career still right for me?" The answer isn'

Introduction When people talk about career success, they often focus on qualifications, confidence, networking or climbing the corporate ladder. All important, of course. But there's another ingredient that rarely gets the recognition it deserves, and it doesn't appear on your CV. Friendship. 👭 My primary Career Cheer Squad Member! Every successful woman deserves one; The Honest Friend tells you when you're playing small. The Opportunity Spotter sends you interesting vacanci

Have you ever noticed what happens when you have too many browser tabs open? At first, everything works perfectly. You barely notice the extra tabs sitting there. Then a few more appear. A work document, an online shop you meant to come back to, a recipe you saved, a news article you wanted to read, something you need to remember for later. Before long, the computer starts slowing down. Not because one tab is the problem, but because they are all competing for attention at th

The British weather has a reputation for being unpredictable. You can leave the house in sunshine, encounter a sudden downpour before lunch, experience a dramatic gust of wind by mid-afternoon, and then wonder why you ever packed an umbrella in the first place! ☔ Interestingly, our careers can behave in exactly the same way. Changing weather results in changing landscapes! Recently, I found myself organising a large public event for a club I had only been involved with for ab

This week is Environmental Action Week, when conversations tend to turn to recycling bins, carbon footprints and energy saving lightbulbs 🌍🌱. All important, yes. But there’s a quieter, more personal question hiding underneath all of that: What is your working life costing you? Not in salary terms. In energy, wellbeing, confidence and long-term health. Because sustainability is not just about the planet outside the office window. It’s also about the person sitting inside the

I’ve just returned from a glorious week’s leave on the beautiful island of Ibiza. 🌞🌊 It wasn’t packed with constant activity or frantic sightseeing. It was something far rarer: genuine disconnection. I switched off my phone (well… mostly, with the occasional “just checking in” moment, because old habits die hard 📱😄), sank into sunshine, and let my days unfold without a calendar telling me what to do next. I read 3 books on holiday, the phone was never near the pool! And h

June 2026 is Pride Month and it’s never just glitter and parades 🌈. For many women in midlife, especially those navigating leadership roles, it becomes a moment of reflection on identity, visibility and the quiet question many don’t say out loud: Do I still belong in the room I helped build? For LGBTQI+ women and those experiencing menopause at the same time, that question can feel even sharper. Leadership doesn’t pause for hot flushes, identity shifts, sleepless nights, or

Every year around or on 21 June, something rather wonderful happens. The Summer Solstice arrives, gifting us the longest day of the year and a reminder that light has a remarkable ability to reveal what has been hidden. 🌞 Stonehenge sunset solstice For many people, the Summer Solstice passes by as little more than a date on the calendar, perhaps accompanied by photos of Stonehenge and a vague awareness that it stays light until nearly bedtime. Yet for those navigating career

Last week was Volunteers' Week 2026, a national celebration of the incredible people who give their time, energy and skills to support causes they care about. 🌟 A few years ago, but this Crisis At Christmas Rough Sleeping team, was one of my favourite years. Now, if you've been following my recent articles, you may have noticed a bit of a pattern emerging. At the moment, I seem to be running about a week behind on my chosen topics! So, my apologies for arriving fashionably l